Right now, Thunderbird, unlike Firefox and Mozilla, does not ask Adblock whether or not it should load each image it comes across.

(You might've noticed that when you right-click an image in Firefox/Mozilla, one of the menu items says "Block images from servername", while this menu item isn't present in Thunderbird. Adblock hooks into the same part of the backend as does that menuitem, so if/when you see that menuitem present in Thunderbird, it's likely that Adblock will be able to work on Thunderbird.)

The relevant bug in bugzilla is 245361. Until that bug is fixed, Adblock will not be able to work on Thunderbird.

I was just looking at the Thunderbird bug in question, and it seems to imply that they are already calling what they consider to be an appropriate function (::ShouldLoad) to check for http, https, and ftp images, and this bug is merely about extending this to account for additional image leaks like news: images.

Is this really the bug that's blocking AdBlock? I'm wondering whether their fixing that bug would have any practical effect on whether AdBlock could work (at least for the majority of cases such as http images).

If not, could someone in the know please enter a Thunderbird bug that describes the actual changes needed, and set it to block my bug 289312, which generically requests all changes necessary to get AdBlock to work (posting a comment on bug 289312 would also be fine)?

If the bug is correct, and they are already calling ::ShouldBlock for http images, can AdBlock be tweaked to be installable on Thunderbird and use what limited capability they already have?

Reality - "Using Special AntiSpyware Hosts Files are a waste of time and false security. Any Malware/Spyware can easily modify the Hosts File at will, even if it is set to Read-only. Frequently Malware/Spyware uses the Hosts File to redirect your Web Browser to other sites. CoolWebSearch hijackers are masters at altering Read-only ("locked down") Hosts files. They can also redirect Windows to use a Hosts File that has nothing to do with the one you keep updating. The Hosts file is an archaic part of networking setups that was originally meant to be used on a LAN and was the legacy way to look up Domain Names on the ARPANET - DNS History. It tells a PC the fixed numeric address of the internal server(s) so the PC doesn't have to go looking for them through all possible addresses. It can save time when "discovering" a LAN. I don't consider 1970's ARPANET technology useful against modern Malware/Spyware. Special AntiSpyware Hosts Files attempt to associate a known safe, numeric address with the names of sites you want to block. When the user or any process on the PC then tries to access a blocked site, it is instead directed to the safe location. This works as long as the site's numeric IP address never changes. But IP addresses do change and they're supposed to be able to. The Web operates via "dynamic" naming, where a human friendly name (www.google.com) is actually an alias for the real address, which is numeric. The numeric address can and will change from time to time as a site or server is moved or reconfigured. People with out-of-date addresses hardwired into their Hosts File will no longer be able to connect to any site whose numeric address has changed. The Hosts entry will permanently point them to a dead location! It's almost impossible to update a Hosts file frequently enough to guard against all threats and even if you did, you'd probably also run into problems in accidentally blocking good sites that happened to move to new numeric addresses. Large Hosts Files also cause Internet related slowdowns due to DNS Client Server Caching and disabling DNS Client Server Caching is not a solution. KB318803 "The overall performance of the client computer decreases and the network traffic for DNS queries increases if the DNS resolver cache is deactivated." When cleaning Malware/Spyware from a PC, it is much easier to check a clean Hosts File then one filled with thousands of lines of addresses. Considering how easily a Hosts File can be exploited, redirected and potentially block good sites, it is strongly recommended NOT to waste time using Special Hosts Files. Especially when proper Malware/Spyware protection can be achieved by simply using these steps, all without ever using a Hosts File." - Source

Notes - There is a much better solution for bad site blocking using SpywareBlaster which more intelligently use's Internet Explorer's built-in Zone Security settings and the registry.

I'm pretty sure it did, nobody worked on that bug. Generally, Thunderbird uses the same engine as Firefox to display HTML content, so all the content policies hooks should be there - with the exception of some edge cases maybe (the example in the bug is about the news: protocol). I mean, "block loading of remote images" option always worked - and it is a content policy as well._________________Adblock Plus developer
http://adblockplus.org/

Last edited by Wladimir Palant on Sun Sep 24, 2006; edited 1 time in total

RSS isn't any different from a mail for Thunderbird, Forumzilla (RSS extension that has been built-in) makes it look like a regular message. And if you choose to view the original page then it inserts an iframe inside the message, nothing special here._________________Adblock Plus developer
http://adblockplus.org/